This site uses cookies to store information on your computer. Some are essential to make our site work; others help us improve the user experience. By using the site, you consent to the placement of these cookies. Read our privacy policy to learn more.

A REGIONAL FIRM, PLANTE
& MORAN (P&M),
developed and implemented a
strategy called “rerecruiting,” an ongoing
program based on staff recognition and
appreciation, to maximize staff retention.
Its turnover rate for the past decade
ranks between 8% and 15% annually—well
below industry standards.

MANAGEMENT-CREATED
WORKSHOPS explain the value
of rerecruiting and traditional
recruiting on college campuses. When
P&M recruits potential staff members
from college, it discusses their
unlimited potential heading toward
becoming a partner someday.

THE FIRM CAUTIONS THAT
IMPLEMENTING a rerecruiting
program is not a quick fix. Leadership
must start from the top. If firms rely
solely on managers to support the
initiative without engaging partners and
other supervisory staff, the initiative
likely will fail.

THE KEY TO SUCCESSFUL
RERECRUITING is consistent
and proactive communication with valued
staff members. It’s an idea that must be
embedded in the firm culture coming from
the tone at the top and reinforced
through principles, policies and
individual commitment.

THE BROAD-BASED
COMMUNICATION program
emphasizes contact with staff via
e-mails and voice mails about firm
initiatives, congratulations for a job
well done, or a simple “Have a wonderful
holiday.” This activity is based on the
assumption that the more informed staff
members are about the firm’s goals, the
more they’ll feel part of the team and
subsequently will want to stay with the
firm.

BILL BUFE, CPA, is a partner
and human resources director at Plante
& Moran PLLC, headquartered in
Southfield, Michigan. His responsibilities
include firmwide recruiting and staff
career development as well as compensation
administration, performance management,
training, and retention. His e-mail is
bill.bufe@plantemoran.com . LESLIE
MURPHY, CPA, is managing partner of
consulting services and director of
strategic planning at Plante & Moran
PLLC. She is the vice-chairperson of the
AICPA. She has been honored as one of the
top 10 women business owners by the
National Association of Women Business
Owners and cited by Corp!
magazine as one of the most
influential women in Michigan. Her e-mail
is leslie.murphy@plantemoran.com
.

icture your most valued staff
member—that loyal pinnacle of client service,
technical knowledge, team spirit and productivity.
Now picture that person expressing the
unthinkable: She’s leaving your firm for another
position. What do you do? Do you offer her more
money? A promotion? Adjust her schedule or discuss
her unlimited future potential with the firm? Do
you point out just how valuable she is to the firm
and how much you appreciate her efforts? These
words might have been effective last week or last
month, but odds are it’s too late now. You’ve lost
her.

Your Staff Will
Let You Know

When asked
“What kept you here?” staff members’ top
three responses were

Exciting work and challenge
(48%). Career growth, learning and
development (43%). Working with great people
and relationships (42%).

The costs of
staff turnover can be enormous (see “ What’s
Your Turnover Risk? ”). From interviewing
potential candidates to notifying valued clients
that a great client server is departing to dips in
productivity while the incoming staff member
climbs the learning curve to get a handle on the
full scope of the position, losing a critical
staff member can be a devastating blow to
productivity. The odds are against employers who
shortchange staff retention: According to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, the United States will
have 10 million more jobs than people by 2010. In
addition, says The Conference Board, less than
half of all Americans are satisfied with their
jobs. So what can you do? How do you keep them
once you’ve hired them? This case study details
how one firm does it.

Plante & Moran
(P&M), a regional firm headquartered in
Southfield, Michigan, asked those very questions.
To answer them, it developed a strategy called
“rerecruiting,” an ongoing program based on staff
recognition and appreciation to maximize staff
retention. Read on to learn how the firm
incorporated this program into its daily
activities and culture and how it has kept the
annual turnover rate for the past decade between
8% and 15%—about half that of the industry average
for large firms.

Ask yourself the following
questions about your key staff members.
The more times you can answer “yes” to
these questions, the more likely it is
staff will remain with your firm.

Do you know why this staff
member works for your firm and not some
place else?

Do you know this staff
member’s no. 1 career concern, and are
you working with him/her to address it?

Does the staff member
believe he/she is fairly compensated?

Do this staff member’s
values align with your culture?

Does this staff member have
enthusiasm and passion for the work he
or she does?

Is this staff member’s
expertise critical to the practice?

Is this staff member able
to achieve and maintain a balance
between personal and professional
responsibilities?

Does this staff member know
you will actively promote his or her
development via training and challenging
projects?

Have you asked the staff
member what the firm can do to help
him/her be more successful?

RERECRUITING, THE MANAGERS’ ROLES
When confronting
personnel problems, an employer’s instinct often
is to throw money at them, as more money
ostensibly yields a happier staff member. And it
might—in the short term. However, real problems
continue and eventually will have to be dealt
with—and the more-money solution can be
potentially devastating to other staff members who
perceive the short-term fix as unfair. Research
shows that as long as compensation is fair, it
doesn’t tend to be a major factor in staff
turnover. So what is? A good retention program.

Nearly 20 years ago, P&M developed its
rerecruiting initiative. Its human resources staff
spoke with office leadership about staff
retention. They convinced partners, managers and
staff to “buy in” by reviewing the benefits of the
“high-touch” system and achieved the results they
wanted: higher staff morale, better teamwork and
lower turnover.

To begin embedding the
idea of rerecruiting in firm culture, Plante &
Moran created workshops to explain its value and
that of traditional recruiting on college
campuses. When P&M recruits potential staff
members from college, we roll out the red carpet.
We let them know how much we like them and want
them to work for the firm. We discuss their
unlimited potential up to and including becoming a
partner someday. That’s the first step in the
retention program.

At management
workshops, P&M poses a question: When’s the
next time you’ll be recruited like that? Most
likely the answer is only when you’re looking for
another job. The essence of rerecruiting is to
envision what you’d do today if that valued staff
member were to tell you she was leaving—and do it
now. The philosophy is to continuously rerecruit
staff so they constantly feel important, valued
and part of the team. All partners participate in
these workshops.

Implementing a rerecruiting
program is a gradual process and has slowly become
embedded in our culture. One major caution:
Leadership must start from the top. If firms rely
solely on managers to support the initiative
without engaging partners and other supervisory
staff, the initiative likely will fail.

The key to rerecruiting is consistent and
proactive communication with valued staff members.
It’s not a program to be managed arbitrarily;
rather, it’s an idea that must be integrated into
the firm culture and reinforced through
principles, policies and individual actions. These
include the following components:

Buddy system and team system.
Immediately upon arriving at
P&M, each new staff member is assigned a
“buddy” and a team partner. The buddy typically
has three to five years of experience and
functions as a big brother or big sister to help
the new staffer become acclimated. The buddy is
always available to answer questions, serve as a
sounding board for ideas or offer advice. Buddies
undergo training to learn how best to help
acclimate new staff to the firm.

The team
partner takes the mentor role. Team partners are
responsible for career coaching and planning and
performance evaluations. In short, all new staff
members automatically have two people assigned to
their care and career development, which helps to
build staff loyalty and morale from day one.

In addition P&M has a secondary buddy
program that pairs expectant mothers with a staff
member who has had a child while at the firm and
is familiar with our parenting policies and
practices. This buddy helps the expectant staff
member transition from work to home and then back
to work upon expiration of the leave.

Open-door policy. P&M
has an open-door policy whereby staff members are
encouraged to talk with team partners, buddies and
other leaders about questions, problems or career
development at any time.

Performance management system.
High-performance and high-retention
cultures succeed by creating an environment in
which everyone is pulling in the same direction
for the common good of the firm. Ensuring that
reward systems (compensation and promotions, for
example) support the business objectives of the
organization is a key component in aligning
behaviors with desired outcomes.

Regularly scheduled meetings.
Team leaders initiate informal
meetings regularly with staff members to rerecruit
them. We encourage these supervisors to ask staff
questions such as “Do you feel challenged?” “Are
you pleased with the direction of your career?”
and “How can we help you be successful?” In
addition P&M makes staff development an
integral part of performance management. Each year
all staff members also are required to develop a
culture-enhancement goal to be realized the
following year. They’re encouraged to step outside
of their comfort zone and do something they
normally wouldn’t do. This could be participating
in a firm-sponsored community service event, such
as Paint-the-Town or Adopt-a-Highway, or getting
to know a new staff member who’s not part of their
department and helping him or her acclimate to the
firm. This is above and beyond the buddy program.
It’s an additional incentive to assure that the
firm culture is enhanced and the rerecruiting
initiative continues to be successful.

Formal career planning.
Staff members attend two sessions
per year: one annual planning session and one
midseason checkup. Team leaders make sure they’re
in touch with how staffers are feeling, whether
they’re challenged, whether they’d like to pursue
a different direction and whether they need
additional training/development. Many staff
members take advantage of free, internal, in-depth
vocational/psychological assessment to help them
find the right place within the firm to maximize
their contribution and fulfill their needs. The
goal is for staffers to be excited about their
jobs and feel appreciated and valued, even more so
than they felt when they came to the firm.

GETTING STARTED
Here’s what P&M
suggests CPA firms should do to develop a
rerecruiting system of their own.

Develop a core purpose and set of
principles. A core purpose and
set of principles are more than a framed mission
statement residing in the lobby. They’re the
foundation of our firm’s culture. These are
common-sense statements that supervisors can refer
to when making decisions. P&M’s core purpose
is “to be a caring, professional firm deeply
committed to our clients’ success.” It’s from this
purpose that we developed our set of principles.
(The full text of P&M’s set of principles can
be read online at
www.plantemoran.com/about/statement.htm ).

Develop a mentoring program.
Start with a buddy system of sorts.
It’s a win-win situation, as it helps the new
staff member acclimate to the organization and
contributes to the current staffer’s development
by expanding his or her confidence and skills in
communication, relationship building and
leadership. It’s important for the program to
include all new hires—not just younger ones who
are beginning their careers—and staff members at
all levels, from administrative to senior
managers. The mentoring program is a high priority
for all staff members—not something that sits on
the back burner until they find the time for it.

Make an art of recognition.
We try to make praise an ongoing
practice and avoid stockpiling it for the annual
performance review. When a staff member succeeds
admirably, tell him or her. You also might
consider sending notes home to a spouse or to
parents and taking the staff member to lunch for
no reason other than the fact that you care. Be
sincere and be timely. These personal touches are
invaluable as no one can be appreciated too much.

Some supervisors are better at giving praise
than others; those to whom it doesn’t come
naturally often want to forgo it altogether,
rather than be viewed as mechanical or insincere.
This is a big mistake. Staff members value
recognition—some value it even more than money.
And although CPAs are educated and trained to be
professional faultfinders, this inherent
preoccupation with the negative is a recipe for
disaster when it comes to managing human capital.

Staff members’ tenure is determined largely
by their relationships with their team leaders. If
all you can muster to compliment a job well done
is a noncommittal grunt, your valued staff members
are probably halfway out the door already. In the
book First, Break All the Rules by Marcus
Buckingham and Curt Coffman (Simon & Schuster,
2001), the authors say, “If your relationship with
your manager is fractured, then no amount of
in-chair massaging or company-sponsored dog
walking will persuade you to stay and perform.”

Communicate openly, candidly and often.
Although senior management can
clearly see the future of the firm, the rest of
the staff may be puzzled and confused. It’s
crucial that senior management communicate the
direction of the firm to all staff members and
ensure they understand how they can effectively
contribute as individuals. For example, our
managing partner Bill Hermann travels to all 17
firm offices to conduct “road shows” where he
meets with small groups (10 to 15) of managers to
express appreciation, discuss the direction of the
firm and answer questions. It has proven to be a
significant morale booster, which cascades down to
other staff members. Leadership and rerecruiting
must start at the top.

What a
Difference a Decade Makes
F or the first time in
history, fully half of the new hires in
CPA firms are women, and their unique
needs and expectations are major
recruitment and retention issues. The
AICPA reports that 50% of its new members
are women. Its annual survey, The
Supply of Accounting Graduates and the
Demand for Public Accounting Recruits,
showed that 59% of female accounting
graduates with master’s degrees were hired
into public accounting.

Firms that
support the link between women’s
advancement goals and the firm’s
business goals in their strategic plans
are seeing success in the retention of
women. Clifton Gunderson has experienced
a positive female retention rate due to
its emphasis on workplace flexibility
and leadership development. Says CEO
Carl George, “We now have one of the
best retention rates for women in the
profession, and it pays.”

The
most recent study by the AICPA Work/Life
and Women’s Initiatives Executive
Committee, which tracks staffing trends
in the profession, showed that, after
having a child, 90.3% of women return to
public accounting (two-thirds full-time
and one-third part-time), leaving 9.7%
as stay-at-home moms. Media attention in
major publications tends to focus more
on women opting out of the workforce
than on the far greater number who are
full-time, viable staff members,
managers and partners.

According
to Shaun Budnik, women’s initiatives
director at Deloitte & Touche:
“Since the launch of our women’s
initiative in 1993, the percentage of
women partners at the firm increased to
17% from 7%, that is, to more than 600
in 2003 from 97 in 1993. The growth in
the firm’s revenue for the same period
has also been dramatic: U.S. revenue
increased to $5.93 billion from $1.93
billion.”

We also have
a program we’ve dubbed the “Breakfast Club,” in
which each member of management has breakfast once
a month with small groups of staff (a maximum of
three at a time). There’s no agenda. It can be a
simple “getting to know you” meeting or a Q&A
session. All levels of staff are included, and
more than 600 staff members have attended these
meetings over the past five years.

Finally, Bill Hermann and the rest of the
management team communicate frequently with staff
via e-mails and voice mails about firm
initiatives, success stories, congratulations for
a job well done or a simple “Have a wonderful
holiday.” The more informed staff members are
about the firm’s goals and accomplishments, the
more they will feel part of the team and
subsequently want to stay with the firm.

A
famous newscaster interviewed a custodial worker
at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral,
Florida. “What do you do?” he asked. “I helped put
a man on the moon!” replied the custodian. This
illustrates what can happen when staff are
actively engaged.

The time to begin doing
what’s necessary to retain your staff is now. Your
staff members place more value on spontaneous acts
of appreciation and recognition than on those that
come when you’re forced to act out of desperation
due to a raging job market (see “ Staffing Woes: The 404 Talent
War ”).

It’s true that developing a
firm culture that puts a premium on rerecruiting
is an enormous undertaking. Moreover, it’s a
considerable investment of nonchargeable time.
However, investing in rerecruiting yields higher
staff morale, lower turnover and better teamwork.
This, in turn, yields happier clients and a better
bottom line, allowing you to continue to invest in
rerecruiting. It’s an investment that, frankly, we
couldn’t afford not to make.

Staffing
Woes: The 404 Talent War
T he word on the street is “Hold onto
your staff any way you can.” Employees are being
lured away with promises of greener pastures, which
translate into workplace flexibility and money.
Sounds like an old story, but there’s a new twist:
Section 404, Sarbanes-Oxley’s guidance for managing
internal controls, is fueling the fire.

“The war
for talent is heating up,” says Leslie Murphy,
managing partner—client services, Plante &
Moran, a regional firm in Southfield, Michigan.
“Our professionals are being heavily recruited and
receive numerous calls from headhunters seeking
experienced CPAs. The ante on referral bonuses has
increased as much as $7,000 at some firms.” Murphy
says that Sarbanes-Oxley, especially the extra
requirements imposed by section 404, has put a
tremendous talent pressure on CPA firms that audit
public companies. In fact some of these firms are
turning away business and letting go of smaller
public clients, increasing opportunities for firms
of all sizes. This new demand, however, is causing
an immediate staffing shortage. “The phenomenon is
a double-edged sword,” she says. The opportunities
for public accounting firms are endless as long as
you hold onto your staff.

“Rule 404 is a
huge human resources concern for public companies
and their auditors,” agrees Chuck Landes, AICPA
director of audit and attest services. “From the
senior to the manager level, experienced CPAs are
needed to document and test internal control
systems as rule 404 becomes effective.”

Companies need extra CPAs to implement and
manage section 404’s guidance over internal
controls, and CPA firms need to adequately staff
their client engagements. The result is a Rubik’s
Cube effect on staffing, with companies hiring
people away from CPA firms and firms hiring away
from one another. Local, regional and national
firms are actively recruiting to handle the extra
compliance work and staff new business. William E.
Balhoff, audit and consulting director at
Postlethwaite & Netterville, in Baton Rouge,
Louisiana, notes that “Rule 404 has given more
work to our profession with the same number of
staff to go around.”

Adding to the crisis,
says Lauren Malensek, chief human resources
officer of the regional firm Clifton Gunderson
(CG) in Peoria, Illinois, is the fact that the
baby boomer generation is getting ready to retire.
Experts such as Bruce Tulgan, author of
Generational Shift: What We Saw at the
Workplace Revolution, predict a shortage of
workers. By 2006, Tulgan estimates, two
experienced workers will leave the workforce for
every new worker who enters it.

Attracting
and retaining qualified staff is not a new concern
for firms. In fact it has been their top
management concern for several years, but keeping
that talent trained, motivated and inspired is
another matter altogether. Skimming the surface of
employees’ needs on an ad hoc basis might not be
the best approach. In a PCPS survey of top talent
conducted in 2000, 88% of respondents called
respect for work/life issues the no. 1 reason they
stayed with their firms. This statistic can be
validated from the number of public accounting
firm success stories (as well as those in the
corporate arena) generated through flexible
scheduling programs and creating opportunities for
staff to participate in leadership development and
mentoring programs.

Firms of all sizes are
experiencing section 404 staffing woes: “We are
always looking for good people. We are able to
find new five-year graduates with strong GPAs from
good schools—but finding people with three or four
years of experience is very tough,” says managing
partner Robert Harris of Harris, Cotherman &
Associates, a firm of 15 professionals in Vero
Beach, Florida. “Everyone wants to do tax and
litigation consulting. Finding people who want to
be auditors is very difficult—even though rule 404
is not an issue for us.” Harris says there is no
silver bullet; you simply need to keep looking.

Firms increasingly are implementing
strategies to retain staff. At CG this begins
during the recruiting process. “We are getting
prepared for the crisis—gearing up for the
shortage of talent,” says Malensek. The firm has
deployed human resources professionals to its 54
offices around the country to facilitate training
and retention of professional staff. That training
includes everything that falls under career
development, such as “career pathing,” career
planning and mentoring. “Management uses the
predictive index, a proprietary management tool
developed for personality profiling, during the
recruiting and hiring process.” The index has
helped CG identify what motivates people—“their
work styles, self-confidence and how they relate
to each other,” says Malensek—and has been
beneficial in team building, training assessment,
retention, and promotion and leadership
assessment. Krista M. Kaland, partner in charge of
Priority One—a plan to improve recruitment,
retention and advancement of women—says CG has cut
employee turnover in half. Kaland expresses
satisfaction with the firm’s global use of the
predictive index saying “management of CG is not
alone in the positive response. Staff members are
happy because they’re able to apply and focus
their passions in areas they enjoy.”

Section 404’s challenges already have strained
resources and affect all firms to varying degrees,
even those practices that do not serve public
companies. As it presents opportunities for
practice growth and expansion, it also puts
demands on firms to attract and keep the best
professionals.

—Barbara Vigilante

Barbara
Vigilante is manager of work/life and women’s
initiatives at the AICPA. Her e-mail address is
bvigilante@aicpa.org . Ms. Vigilante is an
employee of the AICPA and her views, as expressed
above, do not reflect the views of the Institute.
Official positions are determined through certain
specific committee procedures, due process and
deliberation.